On Korinthos
Wealthy
Corinth, wicked and luxuriant, occupying the
high ground on the isthmus between Attica and the Peloponnese...
The city’s name is Greek for adorned,
and, in the first and second centuries of the common era, the place was famous
for the gratuitous ornament dripping from the facades of its temples and public
buildings. Here, the so-called
Corinthian order of column was invented, marble capitals writhing with wreathes
of carved acanthus – an order of architecture that other Greeks thought vulgar
and did not adopt, but which the Romans, always ready to be impressed by the
mere appearance of things, embraced with enthusiasm. Roman temples and fora are exuberant with
Corinthian-order columns courtesy of its namesake city.
The
isthmus of Corinth is a mere ligament of rocky bluff stitching the mainland to
the peninsula. Greece is part
of the middle east and war is the rule in that neighborhood. Accordingly, the city itself occupies the
high crest of the ridge as it extends between the seas and embeds itself in the
Peloponnesian peninsula. This is a
defensible place, with deep wells, a city on a hill set against the backdrop of
the vast barren boulder of the Akro-Korinthus, a spire of naked stone at the
city’s back door, hovering over the sparkling bays with their three
harbors. The bays are deeply incised,
bringing the sea into rocky niches on both Saronian and the Corinthan
shores. Steep winding roads lead up from
the harbors to the city on the heights.
Between bay and city gates, there was a kind of GI strip – pawn shops,
fast food places, taverns, brothels and “hot sheet” motels lining the
highway. In Paul’s time, a ship tram
with hoists and massive levers hauled smaller vessels up and over the isthmus
on rails made from thousands of polished logs.
Bigger vessels, too large for the tram, rest at anchor in the
harbor. The sea glitters. In Greece, the sea always glitters
except when it is roused to fury by the winter storms.
The
city is mercantile, expensive, cynical.
A temple to Poseidon clings to a cliff overlooking the water – in a
sea-faring city, it is wise to propitiate the God of the Oceans. Higher up, there are vast temples to
Aphrodite, the Phoenician Athene, and Melqart, also known as Baal, the God that
invented Tyrian purple dye. The temples
smell of blood and incense and their compounds are crammed with
chryselephantine-gilded statues and sacred prostitutes with eyes encircled by
black nebula of kohl; they are pale
creatures of the night, gliding through the shadows. The ring of a theater sacred to Dionysus
makes an alcove in a hillside. The
city’s mercantile district is acrid with the stink of vinegar used to dye fabric
– from its inception as a Phoenician sea-port, Corinth has been famous for exercise of the
dyer’s trade. There is a big synagogue
and a Jewish neighborhood where Hebrew is spoken with koine Greek accent – Hellenized Jews with rambling mansions around
courtyards where there are olive trees and statues of famous athletes and courtesans. Beyond the city’s walls, on the steep
inclines and talus fields climbing to the stony dome of the Acro-Korinthus,
there is a necropolis with cypress and ancient tumulus-mounds and a silent
cubist village of stone sarcophagi, some spiked with phallic-shaped pillars,
others tumble-down with tops dislodged like high, carved marble tanks from
which horses and mules might drink, stone sepulchers carved with all the havoc
and riot of the ancient gods, bearded men and naked women copulating, drinking,
scenes of warfare and love, with the sculpted image of the deceased staring out
uneasily from atop the torso of Dionysus or Juno or Hercules. A shadow slinks through the wild foliage
among the neglected tombs – it is a wild dog, or, perhaps, a jackal. Higher up, where the hunter’s trails lead,
the views are spectacular: the city and its harbors is resplendent, tints of
gold and bronze, the rich purple and red that the dyers brew coloring pennants,
the fleet, white-sailed ships at anchor in the harbor and, on the rocky spine
of the isthmus, in Paul’s time, workmen swarming around excavations where the
Caesar has decreed that a ship-canal be cut from sea to shining sea. Behind the Acro-Korinthus is the wilderness
where there are bears and where, nightly, wolves sing and, perhaps, a last,
lone lion roams the stony defiles.
I
came to Corinth
one morning. We were on a bus and had
come up from Athens,
passing through the dingy suburbs with their rusting shipyards and refineries,
stopping and starting on a highway jammed with heavy trucks. It was a bright day and the sea, which was
always beneath us on our left side, glittered.
Some pretty Byzantine churches with their small domes studded the
cliff-tops and there were gardens in those places where black-robed monks were
strolling. At Eleusis, where the famous
Mysteries sacred to Persephone and Demeter were celebrated, tattered-looking
concrete highrises stood overlooking marshes where a refinery belched fire and
smoke up into the pale blue sky.
Farther
afield from Athens, the city thinned and the suburbs gave way to gated
communities occupying the rocky hills cupping small bays, expensive homes made
from pale concrete hidden among the green trees and gardens. At Salamis,
where Darius wept to see his fleet destroyed, the villas of the super-wealthy
were embedded in the cliffs above private coves, jetties extending out to
yachts in the sea and groves of flame-shaped cypress marking the hidden
entrances to these estates.
The
isthmus of Corinth is about ninety minutes drive by bus from Athens.
The band of high stony land is only a quarter-mile wide. Today, it is cut by the grey gash of the
modern ship canal, two or three-hundred feet deep, a narrow channel shadowed by
the high and sheer stone walls. There
are a couple of locks. One of the seas
is lower than the other – I can’t recall which-- and a couple of vessels are
slowly making their way through that elongated quarry-like canyon.
There
is a truck stop adjacent to the steel highway bridge over the ship canal. The bus stops there for the toilets and so
the tourists can take pictures of the deep, sheer-walled canal. In the truck stop, you can buy baklava and Greek candies made with
sesame seed and honey. The wild peaks
and gorges of the Peloponnese loom ahead, like the mountains around Tucson set down in a
sparkling sea. A sign points the way
toward the bleak spire of the Akro-Korinthus and the ancient city. Tourists don’t go up there much, because
there is nothing really to see. A few
stone steps are cut into a hillside and there are some badly battered and
looted sarcophagi. All that remains of
mighty, wicked Corinth
are seven columns, part of the Roman forum, and, curiously enough, built
according to the Doric order.
Paul
planned to write a “severe” letter to Corinth. The severest and most wrathful letter of all
is Time.
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